Cheeky Monkey is a Western Australian craft brewery with four venues (Caves Road Brewpub, Rockingham, Vasse, and Perth Taphouse) alongside its online shop. Its loyalty program, Cheeky Rewards, leans fully into the brand's playful identity, right down to naming its community "the Troop" and promising members their emails will be "cheeky, memorable and totally worth your time," while its gift cards give that same experience to people who aren't members yet at all.
The Problem This Blueprint Solves: Rewarding Both a Taproom Regular and an Online Shopper
A brewery with four physical venues and an ecommerce shop faces a specific challenge: a customer's relationship with the brand might live almost entirely in one channel, someone who only ever visits the Vasse Taphouse, or someone who only ever orders cans online, and a loyalty program needs to feel equally rewarding either way. Cheeky Rewards solves this with a single earn rate and reward structure that works the same whether points come from a taproom visit or a home delivery order, and gift cards extend that same reach to people who haven't set foot in either yet.
The Blueprint: Four Layers of Loyalty
Layer 1: Transactional Loyalty
Every member earns 2 points per $1 spent at the Bronze, Silver, and Gold tiers, rising to 3 points per $1 at the top Platinum tier. That's a meaningful jump for the most engaged members, a 50% earn-rate boost simply for reaching the top of the program.
Layer 2: Behavioral Loyalty
Beyond standard spend-based earning, the program builds in a "welcome to tier" bonus every time a member moves up, $5 at Bronze, scaling all the way to $50 at Platinum, alongside a matching birthday reward at each level. This means members get rewarded twice for progressing: once for hitting the milestone, and again every year afterward on their birthday, at the value tied to whatever tier they're currently in.
Layer 3: Emotional Loyalty
The tone is doing a lot of work here. From "the Troop" to the "CHEERS for being a valued customer" framing, Cheeky Rewards reads less like a discount scheme and more like being let into a mate's inner circle, reinforced by a tier system that layers on genuinely social perks (member-only sales, exclusive events) rather than purely transactional ones.
Layer 4: Acquisition Loyalty
Cheeky Monkey's gift card is deliberately built for gifting, issued straight to the purchaser's email with instructions to forward it on, meaning most recipients aren't existing members at all. A gift card usable at any of the four venues or the online shop gives a first-time recipient a genuinely open-ended way to try the brand, and once they've redeemed it, there's an obvious next step waiting for them: signing up for Cheeky Rewards and starting to earn points on everything that comes after.
A Program Built to Feel Like the Brand
The most exportable idea here is how consistently the "cheeky" identity carries through every part of the program, not just the name. Reward names like "Party Starter" (a cube of XPA plus a cube of Hazy Pale at Gold), and copy that promises "no spam, just legendary emails," keep the loyalty experience feeling like an extension of the brand's personality rather than a generic rewards portal bolted on top of it. The gift card carries the same tone, framed around "leaving the stress behind" and grabbing "a few beers to celebrate," rather than dry, transactional gift-card copy.
How It Works
Tiers
Bronze (starting tier) - Earn 2 points per $1, a $5 welcome-to-tier award, a $5 birthday reward, and free shipping.
Silver - Earn 2 points per $1, a $10 welcome-to-tier award, a $10 birthday reward, free shipping, and access to Silver+ member-only sales.
Gold - Earn 2 points per $1, a $25 welcome-to-tier award, a $25 birthday reward, free shipping, member-only sales, and early access to limited releases.
Platinum (top tier) - Earn 3 points per $1, a $50 welcome-to-tier award, a $50 birthday reward, free shipping, member-only sales, early access to limiteds, and exclusive events.
Reward catalog
Points redeem for a mix of food, drink, merch, and cash-value discounts:
400 points - $5 off (online only)
500 points - Free serve of fries (in-store only)
600 points - Free pint of core range beer (in-store only)
2,000 points - $25 off a $100+ spend (in-store or online)
3,000 points - Free "Cheeky" t-shirt (online only)
4,000 points - $75 off a $150+ spend (in-store or online)
5,000 points - Party Starter: 1 cube of XPA + 1 cube of Hazy Pale (online only)
8,000 points - $150 off, no minimum spend (in-store or online)
Gift cards
Cards are available in six denominations: $25, $50, $100, $150, $200, and $250, delivered digitally to the purchaser's email for forwarding on to the recipient. Cards are redeemable at any of the four venues via me&u, or online through Shopify, giving a gift-giver full flexibility over how the recipient chooses to spend it.
Signing up
Joining Cheeky Rewards is free, with points accumulating automatically on every purchase, in venue or online, from the very first sign-up.
What This Blueprint Achieves
By pairing a low-friction earn rate (2 points per $1, easily understood) with a reward ladder that mixes fast, low-cost wins (fries at 500 points, a free pint at 600) alongside genuinely aspirational ones (a $150 no-minimum discount at 8,000 points), Cheeky Rewards gives both a casual taproom visitor and a dedicated regular a reason to keep earning. The escalating tier bonuses and birthday rewards, growing tenfold from Bronze to Platinum, give the program real weight at the top end, rather than flattening out once a member passes the entry tier. The gift card, meanwhile, reaches an entirely different audience: people who've never bought from Cheeky Monkey at all, giving the brand a genuine, low-cost way to turn a gift recipient into its next loyalty member.
The Takeaway
Cheeky Rewards is a strong example of a loyalty program that scales its incentives right alongside its personality, and uses gifting as a genuine entry point rather than a disconnected side offer. The numbers do real work, an earn-rate bump and a tenfold jump in tier bonuses give Platinum members something worth chasing, but it's the tone (the Troop, the cheeky copy, reward names like Party Starter) that makes the mechanics feel like a natural extension of a brewery brand, whether someone's redeeming points as a longtime regular or a gift card as a first-time guest.
